Dr Gender Ben's book

[vivariumvivariumsvivaria]

Some bedtime reading for you all.

journals.sagepub.com/toc/sora/68/4

The introduction is an open-access article:

archive.fo/cGcbI

It is very very whiny. It's also filled with stuff like this:

These discourses have racist undertones, as the implicit whiteness of the women who are the subject of protection means that racialised and especially Black women and non-binary people are more likely to be considered dangerously masculine (Patel, 2017). This is due to the enduring colonial legacies that have long defined racialised women as the unfeminine or ‘masculine’ contrast to white women’s presumed ‘natural’ femininity

Who are these people who think that it's impossible to distinguish between men of every colour and black women?! Why are they so fucking racist? Do they honestly think that? That black women look so masculine that single sex spaces would exclude them? Utter racist bastards.

I read the introduction. It's like a lofty building on no foundation whatsoever. It is not nailed to anything stable, it has no evidence for, say, the above racist assertions, but it uses them to intertwine concerns about racism with transgender goals.

I have seen that approach used a lot recently, of course, and it is a good strategy for a tiny group to try to piggy-back on a far larger and more accepted movement. But it is still not evidence at all.

And it is very irritating.

@HoneysuckIejasmine

Who are these people who think that it's impossible to distinguish between men of every colour and black women?! Why are they so fucking racist? Do they honestly think that? That black women look so masculine that single sex spaces would exclude them? Utter racist bastards.

It baffles me too. The only thing I can come up with is that some black women wear their hair really short. Still obviously women and probably because they get told that their natural hair is unprofessional.

Wow, there is a huge amount of straw-non binarypersonning in that introduction!

That they wholesale interpret the pro women/female position of groups such as FPFW and WPUK as simply "anti-trans" and yet still manage to focus almost entirely on transwomen rather than transmen tells you all you need to know...

There is a word for that, isn't there?

@nauticant

The introduction is an open-access article:

archive.fo/cGcbI

It is very very whiny. It's also filled with stuff like this:

These discourses have racist undertones, as the implicit whiteness of the women who are the subject of protection means that racialised and especially Black women and non-binary people are more likely to be considered dangerously masculine (Patel, 2017). This is due to the enduring colonial legacies that have long defined racialised women as the unfeminine or ‘masculine’ contrast to white women’s presumed ‘natural’ femininity

The assertion that biologically male people share any commonality with black women, as opposed to black women and white women being identically female (and thus equally fundamentally different to all males) is hideously racist. They are the ones positioning black women as less female than white women, as an attempt to hijack anti-racist discourse to shield their arguments, and I can't think of much that's more racist than that. It''s exactly the same as their seeking to use people with DSDs - I leave Clare Graham, amongst other advocates, to point out how horribly demeaning and manipulatively exploitative that is.

TRAs really have no shame when it comes to co-opting other liberation struggles to demean women who push back at male incursion, and they'll pretzel anything into shape to fit that narrative.

Ivory Towers.

The assertion that biologically male people share any commonality with black women, as opposed to black women and white women being identically female (and thus equally fundamentally different to all males) is hideously racist.

It's part of a fantasy that it's impossible to perceive sex, which also handily negates the impact of sexism.

@merrymouse

The assertion that biologically male people share any commonality with black women, as opposed to black women and white women being identically female (and thus equally fundamentally different to all males) is hideously racist.

It's part of a fantasy that it's impossible to perceive sex, which also handily negates the impact of sexism.

It also negates the possibility of transphobia.

I've witnessed transphobia. I know it was transphobia, because the male people in question wore clothes that express feminine gender, and they were being given disgusting abuse for it in the street by arseholes.

If I couldn't discern sex, I'd not have known it was transphobic - and if the transphobes couldn't discern sex, they'd not have known who to be transphobic towards, either.

It also negates the possibility of transphobia

Agree. However the priority of genderism is affirmation of identity, not protection of rights.

I saw a thread explaining that Serena Williams experienced prejudice because of transphobia.

It's utterly bonkers. Slave women were subjected to massive sexual exploitation by their owners - they were never seen as men.

I saw a thread explaining that Serena Williams experienced prejudice because of transphobia.

Yes. I’m sure this had a greater affect than the inability of th

Oops.

Than the inability of the rankings system to accommodate pregnancy.

Wow, that introduction is really quite something. It goes in all sorts of unexpected directions.

In fact the system was changed after her pregnancy.

I started to read this academic text rather naively hoping for some sort of rational explanation into the thinking behind gender ideology. Even if I expect I'll disagree, I keep reading this stuff in an attempt to understand the arguments of the other side.

However, yet again, within a couple of paragraphs it turns into a right load of nonsensical, tangental old cobblers doesn't it?

Sigh. Is this really the best they've got??

Honourable mention for FWR, although I object to 'trans-exclusionary feminist movement' as a descriptor:

In 2018, the UK government held a public consultation on GRA reform. The effect, however, was a backlash against the proposed changes. Leading up to the consultation, multiple campaign organisations were founded to specifically resist self-determination as the mechanism by which birth certificate sex marker can be changed. Organisations including A Woman’s Place UK (WPUK), Fair Play For Women (FPFW), Mayday4Women, We Need To Talk and the Lesbian Rights Alliance held meetings across the UK, building a new trans-exclusionary feminist movement that also rapidly expanded online through digital platforms, such as Twitter and the Mumsnet ‘feminist chat’ message board. The activities and views of these groups have also been widely reported by the media. GRA reform has not materialised at the time of writing.

It makes me feel optimistic reading this - it seems we haven't been shouting into a void after all!

a new trans-exclusionary feminist movement

If this were true it would mean that transmen are to be excluded. The overwhelming view by gender critical feminists is firmly that transmen are to be included. It's important to get this right because it clearly shows that "TERF" as a definition is actually a lie.

Oh yes of course we are only interested in protecting white women... it’s BAME women who are going to be disproportionately affected by this genderwang because the lack of single sex will prevent many of those women And girls from participating in sports, Girl Guides, going out to shops, using DV shelters...

And don’t get me started on the “black women look masculine” bullshit. Racist fucking arseholes.

How perverse! I know prominent black women - Williams, Obama - were verbally abused by being likened to men in disguise but that is racism and misogyny, not transphobia! How many skirts can they hide behind, how many injustices misappropriate?

Funny how nobody ever called feminism men-exclusionary, isn't it?

The List of people who think black women should be compared to men:

1. white supremecists
2. men’s rights activists
3. trans rights activists

The cultural positioning of trans women as dangerous to cis women relies on gendered conceptualisations of (cis, implicitly white) women as necessarily fragile in relation to (cis) men, who in turn are conceptualised as having superior physical (and sexual) prowess. By positioning (cis, white) ‘females’ as a category uniquely vulnerable to the threat of ‘male’ violence (and especially ‘biological’ male sexual violence), trans-exclusionary arguments around toilet access – including those advanced by self-proclaimed feminist groups – lend support to the gendered and misogynistic discourses that have long positioned (white) women as the ‘weaker sex’ needing protection (by men, from men).

Apparently, it is now “feminist” within sociology to use scare quotes when referring to male violence. And to claim, incorrectly, that men set up women only spaces for women. What ahistorical garbage.

How the F did the academy get to the point where women can no longer talk about male violence as an actual real thing That effects women and everyone else?

From the editors’ concluding essay

I’m a middle class white woman?! Whoopee! There’s me thinking I was a working class woman descended from Irish travellers. I’m so glad they are able to label me, otherwise I would have continued to be under that misapprehension. I can’t wait to tell my child’s best friend’s parents. I think they will be delighted, after they finish laughing their middle class socks off. 🤣